Newstag plans crowd-curated newsreel service

Video news service Newstag is to launch a business-to-business news service designed to offer online publishers and telcos bespoke, broadcast-quality ready-to-air news programmes.

‘Newsreel’ will provide tailored news bulletins using professionally-produced video content that is curated by audiences. Using big data and machine learning, the result will be to provide top quality news programmes targeted to reflect the interests of viewers in any geographic market or demography.

“When you let the crowd curate the news agenda, audiences around the world build a picture of themselves through what they choose to watch and share,” explained Newstag co-founder Henrik Eklund. “By creating packages that reflect these concerns and interests, we put individuals in control of the news they consume. This will create more democratic news programming that has greater relevance for viewers, both on a global and local level.”

According to Newstag, content providers, whether they are online publishers or telcos, are set to benefit as much as consumers from this service as the production cost is a fraction of the traditional cost of producing news programming, without any loss of quality or relevance. This will provide a sustainable solution to providers who are looking for news content but unable to fund their own news operation, while also giving existing newsrooms the opportunity to allocate resources to professional journalism, instead of overheads.

The model – claimed as a world first – is drawn from the Newstag platform, a ‘mobile-first’ news service aimed at consumers that enables users to create their own personalised TV channel or ‘tagstream’ in seconds, organising, consuming and sharing stories that they find relevant or interesting among their social networks using the latest web and mobile technologies. All the content is drawn from some of the world’s leading professional news producers such as AP, AFP and Bloomberg.

“Audiences want to engage with and understand the world they live in and to provide a balance to videos of cats on skateboards, we want to empower people to engage and make a real difference,” added Newstag co-founder Camilla Dahlin-Andersson. “Newstag isn’t a shallow ‘light agenda’ platform. Users can explore breaking news topics in greater depth than ever before through personalisable tags, while news from multiple sources gives everyone the opportunity to consume stories from different angles, creating a more nuanced picture of the world.”